


On the Wings of Melpomene

by dr_lumieres



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Boarding School, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 05:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12074232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr_lumieres/pseuds/dr_lumieres
Summary: Raffles and Bunny get to know one another better in the context of the school production ofRomeo and Juliet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An old piece originally posted on LiveJournal in 2011 that I thought I should bring over here.

The episode I am about to relate occurred many years before the night when, in my hour of need, I followed Raffles into a life of crime. A man’s school days do not usually form the period from which his proudest, most defining moments may be drawn, and mine are no exception. One term of my time at school was, however, the occasion of a collusion with Raffles in which my readers may discern a foreshadowing of our then future partnership. It is for this reason that I tell it, in the hope that this digression, this reminiscence of a time when neither of us had yet quite left behind his days of childhood (though I much less than he), will be taken in the spirit in which it is given.

 

**

  
A cold mist had settled on the field as the sun sank behind the line of trees that bordered the cricket ground. Raffles had bowled four for ninety-eight and had every reason to be pleased with himself, but I could detect a frown between his eyes when the players were called off for the day. I got to my feet, mightily relieved at the prospect of returning to the warmth of the school – not to mention the prospect of tea – and was about to run to help Raffles with his things when I saw him waylaid by Thrasher Taylor, so I thought the better of it and lingered by the pavilion a few moments longer. Thus it was that I caught a few words of conversation as Nab walked by, accompanied by Mr Howarth, the English master.

  
‘...something for the boys to do, now that we are nearing the end of the season during which it is reasonable for them to spend long hours at sport out of doors,’ Mr Howarth was saying.

  
‘Yes, I begin to warm to this project of yours,’ Nab replied, in a hearty tone. ‘I presume you have a play already in mind?’

  
‘Shakespeare seemed the only...’ – and I heard no more. But I had heard enough! Here at last was something in which a literary fellow like myself could prove himself. I had a fleeting vision of myself as Caesar: _Et tu, Brute?_ I would gasp, as I sank to my knees and slumped forward beneath the blows of my assassins. Or perhaps not Caesar, I reflected, but Cassius. And it was then that Raffles broke in on my thoughts.

  
‘Loath to play the attentive squire this once?’, he queried, a gleam of mirth discernible in his blue eyes.

  
‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry,’ I started, collecting his coat from the bench where it had lain beside me all the afternoon, and taking the bat from him. ‘Only I’ve just overheard a bit of conversation was all. I say, you weren’t half bad today!’

  
‘I’d been hoping to make it five,’ came the equanimical reply, ‘and to take Fletcher’s wicket, but that was a good partnership he had with Taylor, and my chance didn’t come.’ We strode toward the Kings Quad with the glow of the sun washing nearly horizontal past us and giving to the buildings ahead a fine glow against the dense grey cloud that had stolen up behind them. The sight, accompanied by the smoky edge of the late autumn air, made me take deep breaths and feel that it was the very time to be alive. ‘My, but you’re a pensive rabbit tonight,’ Raffles chaffed me gently again. ‘Whatever was this conversation that you overheard that it has exercised you so?’

  
‘What do you think it will be?’ I asked him, once I had satisfied his curiosity. ‘ _Julius Caesar_ , perhaps.’

  
‘Oh, one of the histories. _Henry IV_!’came his reply.

 

**

  
It was as soon as the following morning that we learned more. Mr Howarth gave a little speech to the assembled boys, summarising the train of thought that had led to the decision.

  
‘Because our aim is to transform England’s youth not only into good sportsmen, but cultivated men of the world,’ he pontificated. ‘Nonetheless, given your years, we have settled upon a piece, the heroes of which are young men like yourselves, and whose trials should instill in you a disinclination to rancour and pugnacity. The boys of this school will perform, some months hence, no less a masterpiece than Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_. We shall hold an auditioning session on Friday, and I want no nonsense from any of you regarding our decisions. Thank you. Now, to your lessons!’

  
We all scurried away, some whispering animatedly, and I cast my mind this way and that, wondering what sort of part I should find – if, that is, I were chosen to take part at all. It was all anyone would speak of for a week, and many boys speculated in jocular tones about who would fill the ladies’ roles. I had no intention of trying for them myself and had my eye on the part of Mercutio.

  
As it happened, when the day came (but was it so very surprising?) not one of us had put himself down for a female part, with the very notable exception of Fatty Palmer-Fowke, who caused general near-hysteria with his energetic incarnation of the Nurse and would certainly be rewarded with the part. I was paying scant attention to the goings-on after having done my best Mercutio, when I heard my name called, along with those of two other boys, one in lower fourth, the other in middle fourth, like myself. A titter rose from all assembled. I shall not dwell on the scene of humiliation that followed. Mr Howarth asked us all to read a scene as Juliet, and it was with an unshakeable sense of impending doom that I finally left the hall.

  
In Raffles’s study that evening, he was absorbed in his books, and I in mine. When the clock struck eight, I made his cocoa in silence and brought it to him, and only then did he set down his book and glance up at me.  
‘So silent tonight? That’s not the mark of a Mercutio!’ he allowed a shadow of a smile to play upon his lips. Then he saw my blush and gave a little frown. ‘Whatever is the matter, Bunny?’

  
‘You’ve heard nothing, then?’ I cried, and stopped, uncertain of how to continue. Raffles shook his head and looked questioning. I gave an anguished groan. ‘Three of us were asked to read as Juliet,’ I said, and suddenly, unable to face him, turned towards the window. ‘And while my dearest wish is that one of the other two might win the part, of the others, one muffed his lines and the other’s voice broke,’ I lamented. ‘I’ll be the laughing-stock of the school, Raffles!’

  
I stole a glance back at him. He had a very peculiar expression on his face, half wry smile, half concern, with yet a soupçon of something I could not then identify. ‘Very rum situation to be in, indeed,’ came the verdict at last. ‘Of course the ones who will end up taking part in the show, they’ll all be serious, thespian-minded chaps like yourself, so I should think it might be rather a gay sort of lark.’

  
I shook my head darkly. ‘Emerson was there,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why exactly, but he read for Romeo.’ I felt a sickening dread.

  
Raffles hesitated briefly. ‘Dozens must have auditioned for the part,’ he declared. You probably didn’t pay attention to them and only noticed Emerson because he’s a bully and enjoys tormenting the younger boys. I’m sure he did not distinguish himself by his acting ability.’

  
All was silent again between us as Raffles sipped his cocoa and I looked blindly out at the darkened grounds. After a while I broke the silence. ‘Shall I turn down your sheets?’ I enquired.

  
‘Thank you, but no, Bunny’, came the reply. ‘You push off to bed; I’m going to have a bit of a think about things.’ I made to go, but as I passed Raffles’s chair, he reached out a hand and caught my wrist. ‘Don’t worry about it tonight,’ he said, his eyes full of kindness. ‘The play, I mean. I am sure it will all work out for the best.’ He paused, and a mischievous look twinkled in his eye, ‘and, I say, I think you’ll make a capital Juliet!’

 

**

  
It was on the Monday afternoon that the list was posted, and although the looks and whispering I sensed as I approached were all the confirmation I needed regarding the role that had been assigned to me, I felt a need to know what company I would be keeping. My heart thumped in my ears as I looked up at the paper. Few surprises, until – ‘Romeo . . . Arthur J. Raffles’ jumped from the page at me. Confused, I tried to make the columns line up correctly – surely I had read in error the very thing I most wanted to see but that could simply not be true – Raffles had not been present at the session! But no, there it was still, after I had rubbed my eyes and looked again. In a dazed wonder I stumbled out into the quad and ambled aimlessly around the school, my thoughts in a whirl, until tea-time.

  
‘Well, Bunny, what villain has been cast as your paramour?’ Raffles asked me that evening. I looked up to gauge the expression on his face. He must surely know, I thought.

  
‘Such a villain that I think he must be in league with Mephistopheles himself,’ I declared. ‘He gets the part without even having tried for it!’

  
‘Really?’ Raffles sounded genuinely amazed. ‘I find the picture you paint an improbable one. Our good masters would never give a role to a boy they had not heard read. How can you be so sure that he didn’t try for it?’

  
‘But I was there!’ I exclaimed, exasperated by his game.

‘ _Where_ were you, Bunny, exactly? In Mr Howarth’s rooms on Saturday morning?’ A smile played about his features briefly. When he had no reply from me, he assumed an admonitory tone. ‘Logic, Bunny, logic. _Non scio, ergo non est_. That was your reasoning, my rabbit, wasn’t it? Not very sound, however, you’ll agree.’ I hung my head. ‘Now,’ Raffles crossed his legs and gave me a genuine smile. ‘Tell me whether you are still as worried about this play as you were two nights ago.’

  
‘Not by half!’ I admitted warmly. ‘But how did you do it, Raffles? What on earth could you have said to sway him?’

  
My champion smiled again and looked not a little pleased. ‘I asked myself what he would want to hear. I went to him in the morning and told him that I had greatly wished to try for the play but that I had been overcome by fever the day before. I fancy I even managed to look a little feverish for effect. I pleaded with him to let me read a scene, which he allowed with good grace. On my way out, I said that he must naturally fill the role with whoever had acquitted himself best of the part, but that I hoped he would also consider his character, as the younger boy cast as Juliet would naturally be in a very vulnerable position. In short, I played three cards, Bunny: enthusiasm, ability and morals. The result, I think you will grant, proves them to have been effective.’

  
I well knew how Raffles could make himself irresistible, but that his influence should extend to the masters filled me with admiration. ‘Oh yes! Oh, Raffles!’ was all I could say. But then an awful thought flew into my mind. ‘But did you – do you, that is – actually want the part? I mean to say, you haven’t only done this...’ I could not bear to speak the rest.

  
‘Oh, you needn’t worry about that,’ he said, with a firmness that quelled my doubts immediately. ‘Something tells me that acting a part may turn out to be as great a game as cricket, and I think it will prove a skill worth developing.’ There was a short silence. ‘Good-night, Bunny,’ he said then, and I left him with such a lightness of heart and a spring in my step that I should have disbelieved it utterly only a few hours before. Raffles was in the play and all would be well in my world!


	2. Chapter 2

My unmitigated joy did not last long, however. The first thing I was told by Mr Howarth was that I should have to let my hair grow as long as it would before the performance, which would occur just before Easter. The idea of nearly five months of this ahead of me was dispiriting. And for the moment there was to be no acting, only reading from our books, with the stern warning that we must all have learned our lines by the time school resumed after the Christmas holidays. It had been decided that the boys who had not received roles in the production would help with costumes and sets, and Emerson was in this group. Although we had no direct exchanges, sometimes he sat at the back of the room when we read our lines, and I found his presence unsettling.

Yet something more than Emerson and my personal suffering (for so it seemed to me, though in truth Palmer-Fowke and those playing the ladies Capulet and Montague had received the same exhortation to put off visiting the barber), something more put a damper on my happiness: I had the impression that, in the days following the announcement of the parts, Raffles had grown reserved and distant. Furthermore, it was soon whispered that the photograph of a very beautiful girl had slipped out from between his books and, from that, it was deduced that he had, at the very least, a sweetheart, perhaps even a fiancée, some said, at home. For some reason this troubled me, and I was uneasy now when I dusted his things, fearing that I should come upon the photograph beneath a book or hidden behind one of the pictures on his wall: ‘The Blessed Damozel’, for example. And so I skulked about his rooms uncomfortably, like an interloper, like (I smile now to say it) a burglar.  
  


**

  
It was after Christmas, when I had learned my lines but wished to repeat them regularly to myself, and sought a quiet place to do this away from the school buildings, where at any moment another boy might come round a corner and surprise me in mid-sentence, that I hit upon visiting the lower field, at the bottom of which was a little copse. There I would say my lines to my heart’s content with the freedom to gesture as I willed, trying different pauses and changes of emphasis. I was discovering, and it chagrined me greatly, that where Raffles had slipped effortlessly into Romeo’s skin, I was struggling in the clumsiest manner to give my Juliet some life.  
  
After some weeks of this regimen, I was down amongst the trees one afternoon, imagining Raffles standing on a darkened stage beneath my balcony. ‘What man art thou that thus bescreen’d in night So stumblest on my counsel?’ I cried, and in the pause I left for his reply, I heard a twig crack not ten feet behind me. I spun round, and there were Emerson and his friend Nichols, leering at me.  
  
‘By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, Because it is an enemy to thee... Because it is an enemy to thee... Isn’t that right now, Manders? Or should I say Bunny?’ Emerson was smirking at me now, from his considerable height and greater bulk. I gulped and wondered how I should reply. For lack of inspiration I decided to say nothing. ‘And why am I an enemy to thee?’ he continued, ‘why, because I had my eye on those very lines and something very fishy happened that makes me think that Raffles’s fag may have been involved. Don’t you think, Nichols, old chap?’  
  
‘Nothing more likely,’ Nichols confirmed.  
  
‘But you’ve got it all wrong,’ I burst out finally, ‘and you can see yourselves that I’m hardly playing the part I wanted either’ – I hoped that honesty here would play out in my favour, but there was to be no hope where Emerson had already decided the outcome of his ambush in advance of it.  
  
‘Wrong? You’re calling me wrong, are you? We all know there’s nothing you’d rather be to Raffles than his Juliet, but I don’t know if you’ve heard, he has a bit of stuff, and not bad-looking either, eh Nichols? Eyes big enough to eat sausage-rolls off of, good mouth and a lot of black hair. So we’ve decided to lend you a helping hand, Bunny. Your tresses may not be as long as you’d like them yet, but at least we can do something about the colour.’ While Emerson had been speaking, I had remained rooted to the spot, transfixed by the dreadful things that he was saying, and I had not paid any attention to Nichols. As Emerson finished his little speech, however, I noticed that Nichols had wandered off, and then, as I took a step, he seized me from behind. I attempted to free myself, but to no avail – I was now powerless!  
  
‘Let’s see now, do you shine Raffles’s shoes with blacking?’ Nichols wheedled. ‘Answer me!’ he commanded, and shook me roughly, when I did not reply immediately.  
  
‘Yes,’ I said meekly.  
  
‘Does he use Nugget?’ he asked.  
  
‘Yes,’ I said again.  
  
‘Ah, good,’ came the reply, ‘because that’s what we’ve got here. And we’re going to give you a beautiful head of black hair with that!’ And, struggle as I might, they smeared a great amount of the stuff into my hair, rubbing it in well, getting some also on my ears, collar, forehead and nose in the process.  
  
‘Why, he looks like a little chimney-sweep!’ Emerson guffawed, when he had done and stepped back to admire his handiwork. ‘Don’t know if that’s really Raffles’s thing, now, what do you think?’ and the two boys made some further remarks the sense of which escaped me, before a kick sent me flying to the ground and they went off back to school, laughing and congratulating themselves on their exploit.  
  
I lay there in the fallen leaves and the damp for a few moments, so overwhelmed was I at the turn events had taken. I did not know what to do or where to go! I could not go to tea in my present state, that much was certain, and I knew I would soon hear the clock strike. But neither could I so easily return to the school and wash without being seen, so I stayed where I was, getting colder and colder and more and more miserable, until at last I realised that while the others were at tea was the very time for me to make a dash for it (and it had grown quite dark by then). Back in the school, I did what I could to clean the blacking from my hair, but the greasy substance stuck fast, and I only succeeded in making a frightful mess everywhere. At last, I had no choice but to fold all of my hair up on my head, like a girl, and cover it with my cap. That done, it was easier to clean my ears and face so that, with a clean shirt on and in relative darkness, a person might not look too closely at me.  
  
I was sitting on the edge of my bed, wondering how I would sleep in my cap and what I would do the next day, when Ayres came in.  
  
‘There you are!’ he began. ‘Raffles has been looking everywhere for you. Better be off, and double quick. When I saw him he was on his way to his study.’  
  
I had never gone to that study with such a heavy heart. If Raffles was looking for me, it meant he had wanted me to do something for him and I hadn’t been there to do it. I couldn’t possibly let anyone see me, I was cold and hungry, and Emerson and Nichols had raised a thing I had temporarily forgotten, which was Raffles’s girl, and the thought of that photograph was not something that raised my spirits.  
  
I knocked, and heard him bid me enter. I closed the door behind me, but stayed near by it, where Raffles had his back to me.  
  
‘You wanted me?’ I asked.  
  
‘I wonder if you’d be a helpful rabbit and lend me your versifying savoir-faire for a spot of comp.,’ he said affably. At any other time I would have been positively gleeful at the prospect of doing verses for him, not to mention flattered, but I did not feel equal to the task that night.  
  
‘I –’ I began. Something in my voice must have alerted Raffles to the fact that all was not as usual, for he turned round in his chair. When he saw me, his eyebrows shot up very high, and I looked at my feet.  
  
‘Why, my dear Bunny, what on earth have you been up to?’ he cried. At first, after all the events of the afternoon, in my confusion, not wanting to be a sneak, I was tongue-tied. But I raised my eyes then to his, and the tender concern I read there loosed the flood-gates. I told him all. All, that is, except that his name had been mentioned during the course of my ordeal.  
  
In a trice he had my cap off and was examining Emerson’s work. ‘Verse comp. be dashed,’ he declared, after giving a low whistle, turning my head this way and that. The warmth of his hands, and their gentleness, after the rough brutality of Emerson and Nichols, released the hurt I had kept bottled up for hours, and I began to cry, very softly. ‘Now don’t cry, my Bunny,’ said Raffles, cupping my face in both his hands. ‘But if you’ve not cried until now, you’ve been very brave. I’ll wager you haven’t had a thing to eat this evening either. You stay here while I go and fetch everything we need to restore your winter coat to its shining splendour. Sit here, by the fire, and I’ll be back in two shakes of a rabbit’s tail.’ He winked at me, and by the time I reached the chair he had disappeared.  
  
I won’t say the rest of the evening wasn’t an ordeal of another sort in a way, although Raffles did everything he could to lessen the unpleasantness. He returned with water, which he warmed, a large bar of soap, several towels and a small parcel under his arm that turned out to be some bread and butter. He apologised for the basic nature of the repast, but I wolfed it down with gusto and gratitude.  
  
‘Now, I think the easiest thing (not very comfortable for you, I’m afraid, dear Bunny), but the _easiest_ thing would be to have you sit sideways on this chair so that your head lies over the bowl of water on the table, so.’ And thus began what seemed like an age of resting at an awkward angle against the edge of the table. All the while he worked, Raffles kept up a cheerful commentary and regaled me with tales from dinner, of cricket matches from past years and of a visit to London he had made the summer before. He questioned me closely too, and when I confessed to a fondness for fishing, he decided that we must one day plunder the local streams together. When he was done, he allowed me to sit up, gave my head a good rub with one of the towels, stood back and studied me, a critical look in his eye.  
  
‘I expect you’ll be a silvery rabbit for a bit,’ he pronounced at last, ‘but what could be more fetching? At any rate, all that’s needed now is for you to sit near the fire and allow yourself to dry. By Jove – you _are_ shivering!’ I nodded and moved my chair closer to the fire, while Raffles placed the remaining dry towel about my shoulders. It seemed only a moment later that I was awakened by a hand that smoothed my hair, then shook my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw with surprise that the fire had died low. ‘I let you sleep as long as I could,’ Raffles was saying in a low voice, ‘but if we don’t go to the dormitory now, there’ll be a lot of tiresome questions to be answered.’ I blinked sleepily up at my saviour and, getting to my feet with leaden heaviness, followed him towards bed.


	3. Chapter 3

If anyone noticed my grey-tinged locks over the days that followed, they said nothing. In truth they had few chances, for somehow, except when I was at lessons, it seemed that Raffles was never far, and his benevolent presence, even two tables away, deep in conferral with another boy in his year, extended a protective aura that discouraged jibes. His watchfulness (if indeed it was that) was made easier by our involvement in Mr Howarth’s production, and I took to sitting at the side of the hall even during sessions for which I was not needed, at least in part for the pleasure of watching Raffles act. Sometimes, when he was not on stage, he would join me for a bit, but more often than not he sat with others in his form, and I could not help but wonder whether the animation in his expression and the sparkle in his eye as he conversed were owed to the subject of the famous photograph – the wretched photograph that I had not even seen!  
  
About one matter touching this play I have so far remained silent, and this is the matter of the two scenes in which Juliet and Romeo exchange kisses. At our first true rehearsal, Raffles turned to Mr Howarth, and said, very coolly and with complete nonchalance, ‘and they kiss, and so on. We’ll do it on the day, sir, but I think you’ll agree that there’s no need for it until then,’ with which the English master readily, almost hastily, concurred. And so, with a few assured words, Raffles succeeded in reducing to nought any expectations or awkwardness that might have surrounded the practice sessions. Nevertheless, I fretted over these scenes, and one fine February day I plucked up the courage to raise them with my friend.  
  
‘Raffles?’ I began, as I idly dusted the books on his shelf, taking each one down in turn to reach behind it. He made a noise of encouragement, and I continued. ‘I wonder, that is to say, I’m a bit worried about... act one, scene five,’ I concluded in a rush. In the pause that followed, I heard him set down his pen. ‘And act five, scene three. I mean,’ I pursued, ‘what if I should make a hash of it?’ I heard Raffles shift in his chair before he spoke, but when he did, his tone was dismissive and light-hearted.  
  
‘You test my knowledge of numbering there, but I see what you’re driving at! Oh, I expect it will be fine, Bunny, just fine. All you’ve got to do is really believe that you are Juliet and that I’m that rotter Romeo and it will come quite naturally. I say, you _are_ a nervous rabbit, aren’t you?’ I finally mustered the will to turn, and saw him grinning at me. ‘I confess that I am preoccupied just now with a much more pressing problem. What do you say we have a saunter over to the kitchens to see if we can steal or beg a spot of something to eat? I’m uncommonly peckish, and you’re a growing boy, Bunny my lad!’ And so before long I had an apple to call my own, but was no nearer to feeling more sanguine about these scenes with Raffles, from whom I had hoped for some more solid advice.

  
**

  
Not a week later, a new incident further eroded my sang-froid where the play was concerned. It occurred (again, as chance would have it) during the so-called ‘balcony scene’. By now a group of boys had constructed a set that only wanted a bit of paint to be wholly transformed into the place of Juliet’s night-time musings. I was in mid-soliloquy that day, not long after we had begun to use the set, when suddenly I felt it shift beneath me. I clutched at the edge of the balcony and spoke the next words, but Raffles interrupted from below, calling out, ‘Jump!’ just as I heard a strange noise and felt the platform give again. In the seconds that followed, I wondered at his enjoinder, for I could much more easily have gone down the ladder I had mounted at the rear, but seeing the urgency in his face, I hesitated no longer, and swung over the balustrade. As I did so, there was a fearful noise and everything began to move about me. I half jumped, half fell into Raffles’s outstretched arms below. He held me for a moment before I felt my feet touch the ground once more, and when I turned to look, I saw, to my dismay, that the whole of the balcony had fallen sideways, having become detached on one side altogether!  
  
Everyone pressed round until Mr Howarth ordered us all back for fear that the construction should collapse further. Everything had happened so quickly that I had not had a moment to feel afraid, but when we all moved away from the broken set, and Raffles withdrew his arm from my shoulder, I felt the enormity of what had just transpired, and of what could have been its outcome. Mr Howarth, having announced that the day’s rehearsal was at an end and that he would personally examine the soundness of the structure before I next climbed up onto it, sent me off to the sick-room with Ayres for matron to give me something calming. I looked over at Raffles, hoping that he might come too, but he didn’t move to join us.  
  
Matron cooed and clucked and made me sit down and drink camomile tea and sent me off to bed, although it was still early. I had got into bed and had shut my eyes when I heard someone enter the dormitory. I looked, and was horrified to see Emerson approaching! Deciding that feigning sleep would not be to my advantage, I sat up and eyed him warily.  
  
‘Bad luck there, Manders,’ he crowed. ‘But very good luck for you that your friend Raffles was there, now, wasn’t it? How do you –’ but there he stopped, as voices were heard approaching the door and a group came in. They were older boys, and Chatfield, a cool fellow whose father was an earl, called out when he saw my visitor.  
  
‘Emerson, don’t go bullying the poor chap after the thing you wot of. Hargreaves here was just fetching something that might interest you. He’s been sent some cigars by a cousin in the colonies and we’re all going out to the pavilion to sample them.’ My persecutor looked torn, but self-interest won out over malice.  
  
‘I was just seeing if he was hurt,’ he said gruffly, and went off with them.  
  
I lay in the darkening room a long while, sleepless now, reflecting on how this play had brought me nothing but trouble. If I’d had that week in November to live over, I wouldn’t have tried for it, I thought miserably. My thoughts were following this rich vein of self-pity, when a tall figure stole into the dormitory. My breath caught, but then I saw that it was Raffles. He looked this way and that, then tiptoed towards me, keeping very quiet in case I slept.  
  
‘It’s all right, I’m awake,’ I called softly, and he approached and sat beside me.  
  
‘ _Are_ you all right?’ he asked, his earnest concern palpable even in the twilight that glowed through the windows.  
  
‘Yes of course. Just had a bit of a scare, but I’m not hurt, thanks to _you_ ,’ I added gratefully, ‘though I wish I’d never heard of this play!’ His hand found mine on the bedspread and covered it reassuringly.  
  
‘You really could have got hurt,’ he mused. ‘I won’t stay,’ he continued, glancing at the door, ‘but I’ll make sure you’re safe from now on, Bunny, I promise, do you hear?’ I nodded.  
  
‘But Raffles, it was an accident.’  
  
‘Probably,’ he said, and rose to his feet. ‘Sleep tight, little rabbit.’ And I watched him leave. I must have slept very shortly and very soundly after that, for I had no recollection on waking in the morning of having heard the other boys come in at all.

  
**

  
The next day, after evening chapel, I ambled into the central quad with Ayres and we began throwing pebbles into the fountain, each aiming at a specific feature of the mosaic under the water. It was a pleasantly mindless occupation, and it was therefore almost with annoyance that I greeted Raffles’s request to come and help him with his lines. In fact, I could make neither head nor tail of it, since his performance was always flawless. If anything, it was I who needed his help, and I began to say so.  
  
‘But you don’t –’  
  
‘– quite manage to get through that scene with Friar Laurence without bungling. Do come, Bunny, you’ll be the good friar.’ And his eyes gleamed significance at me, though I could no more divine their sense than understand why he needed me to read lines at him. I followed him across the quad nevertheless.  
  
‘Pardon my rudeness, Bunny, but you _are_ rather a chump sometimes!’ he murmured, as we entered the building.  
  
‘But I don’t understand. You don’t need any practice!’ At last I was able to voice my confusion.  
  
‘Well, perhaps not with the particular scene I mentioned, that is true,’ my companion admitted. ‘I have something else in mind.’ And that was all he could be persuaded to say until we were safely in his study.  
  
‘No, Bunny,’ he said, when at last the door was shut behind us, and after he had opened it again, having waited a few seconds, and looked up and down the corridor for good measure. He frowned slightly. ‘I’ve been thinking, and you were right.’ He paused, leaving me briefly prey to a second bout of astonishment. ‘The kissing,’ he continued, ‘is just the sort of thing that could cook our goose when the time comes. Especially with your nervous disposition, which has not been helped by recent events. I think, if you’ll agree, that we should have a bit of practice.’ Raffles had not been looking quite at me for most of this little speech, but now he raised his eyes from somewhere just over my right shoulder, and I felt my stomach give a strange though not altogether unpleasant lurch. But I did not know what to say. My mouth was quite dry, and it was all that I could do to squeak, ‘Practice?’  
  
Raffles laughed easily. ‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he said. ‘At the mere idea, you’ve gone stiff as a scarecrow!’ He walked over to where I was standing, I will truthfully confess, in a posture that betrayed my discomfiture. As he approached, I took some deep breaths. ‘It’s all right,’ Raffles said soothingly, placing his hand on my shoulder, ‘the first thing you must do is relax. Just think, there is no reason for you to feel nervous. There is nobody here but us: no Emerson, no Nichols, no Howarth, no audience, not even Romeo or Juliet, no-one but the two of us, so you can stop being anxious.’ His litany had a slightly hypnotic effect, and I breathed normally again, and moistened my lips. ‘Now don’t worry, you silly rabbit,’ he continued, ‘I’m not going to kiss you now, but close your eyes and I’ll help you to relax.’ I searched his face again, but he wasn’t laughing now, so I trusted him and shut my eyes.  
  
‘I’m going to move my hand now,’ Raffles said softly, almost in a whisper. I felt him let go of my shoulder and stroke my head quietly a few times, as though calming a frightened horse. He then threaded his fingers through my hair (it had grown moderately long by now), lifting it, letting it fall, sifting it slowly. As I abandoned myself to Raffles’s touch, the tingling of my scalp became increasingly pleasant, and I gradually forgot all in the world but the lazy caressing of his fingertips. By the time his hands were tracing delicate lines down the back of my neck and beneath my ears, I was quite lost, and when I lifted my chin, now as shamelessly pleasure-seeking as a kitten, I felt one hand stay, while the other slid round behind my head, and all of a sudden his lips were on mine, and it was like nothing I had ever imagined. I felt my insides turn upside-down at the surprise and wonder of it, but as the softness of his mouth gently cajoled mine, my jaw slackened and my lips parted, and Raffles took up this apparent invitation without pause. The wealth of new sensations was exquisite, but then, as if unsure of the liberties he had taken, he drew away again.  
  
After a few seconds, I opened my eyes, barely able to meet his, and directly I did I wanted to hide my face in his blazer. Then he cleared his throat and said, in his usual voice, ‘Perhaps that was a trifle long. Something more like this,’ and now I lifted my face willingly to meet him. This second kiss, though shorter, seemed to be saying, ‘Ah, _there_ you are. I know you.’ When he pulled back, he smiled encouragingly, and said, ‘Now, from Tybalt’s exit,’ and retreated a few steps. I was flustered, and my head empty of lines, but luckily Romeo spoke first.  
  
‘If I profane with my unworthiest hand,’ Raffles looked so keenly at me that it was all I could do to hold his gaze as he took my hand in his, ‘This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss,’ and he brushed my hand with his lips, without, to my confusion, breaking his intense look.  
  
‘Good pilgrim,’ I faltered, ‘you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.’ With that, I touched our palms together and bowed my head, lowering my eyes as I did so from Raffles’s own. He took a step closer to me.  
  
‘Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?’ A teasing smile flitted across his face.  
  
‘Ay, pilgrim,’ I stepped back, ‘lips that they must use in prayer.’ And I turned to walk away.  
  
‘O, then, dear saint,’ Raffles caught both my hands from behind, and spoke the rest of the line softly, almost in my ear, ‘let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.’  
  
‘Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.’  
  
‘Then move not,’ Raffles let go my hands, ‘while my prayer’s effect I take.’ He walked round me and, raising a hand to my cheek, bent and kissed me briefly, gently, but definitely. ‘Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.’  
  
I looked down and allowed a pause, ‘Then have my lips the sin that they have took.’ I glanced up at Raffles again, a half question in my eyes.  
  
‘Sin from thy lips?’ He smiled broadly now, knowing his advances would be well received. ‘O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.’ He slipped his hands about my waist. Mine went to his shoulders for steadiness as I rose on my toes, but when our lips met, I felt myself lean in towards him. This time he seemed to want something, though I could not have said what, but there was a proprietorial feel to his lips, as though he were trying to extract from mine some sweetness or rare flavour. As he pulled away, I thought I felt the light grazing of his teeth upon my lip. I was breathless.  
  
I could only reply in a half-whisper, ‘You kiss by the book.’ For a moment we stood, hand in hand, waiting for the Nurse to call; then Raffles seemed to rouse himself, and exclaimed, as he walked to the window, and as I recovered my wits, ‘That was the best go anybody’s ever had at that scene, I shouldn’t warrant! What a pity no one was here to see it!’ I looked to the window that he was opening for air, and then to the door, remembering now that we were in school and that the presence of others was in fact never far off. He turned back to me. ‘Should we practice again, do you think?’ he asked, slightly flushed from the cold air.  
  
We went through the scene twice more until Raffles announced that we had practiced enough. ‘All that now remains to be done is that last scene, in the tomb,’ he said. He snatched up a blanket that hung across the back of his chair and laid this on the floor before the fire. ‘Now, you’ll have to lie on this. There’s the table, but I think the floor will be better, and there will be less chance of either of us falling off.’  
  
I lay on the blanket on my back, my hands clasped in a prayerful attitude, and shut my eyes, though not quite, for I wished to watch my friend’s acting. ‘I’ll start halfway into that speech,’ he told me, then seemed to consider briefly, collected himself and began.  
  
‘Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair?’ he put his head on one side, still at a respectful distance, but then walked nearer and dropped to his knees beside me. ‘Shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous,’ he touched my forehead, ‘And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour?’ His hand traced the outline of my face, and he sighed. ‘For fear of that, I still will stay with thee; And never,’ he looked about the room and shuddered, ‘from this palace of dim night Depart again: here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh.’ The firelight caused Raffles’s face to seem to shift. ‘Eyes, look your last!’ he groaned, and slid to lie on his side near me. ‘Arms, take your last embrace!’ His head came to rest on my chest, so that all I could see were his black curls. Suddenly he turned onto his stomach so that he was half over me, and very close, ‘and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!’ He kissed me, and looked at me with such sadness that I shivered, and he felt compelled to give another kiss. His head fell to my chest again and he gave a cry, then raised himself. ‘Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!’ Raffles took an imaginary flask from his blazer and raised it before him. ‘Here’s to my love!’ and he threw back his head and drank, the light playing on his throat as I saw him swallow. ‘O true apothecary!’, he gasped, ‘Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.’ And with that, he leaned in, but almost immediately fell motionless beside me.  
  
All was still a moment, until Raffles said, through clenched teeth, ‘Friar Laurence, Balthasar, Friar Laurence, etc. The lady stirs.’ I turned my head to the fire and opened my eyes.  
  
‘O comfortable friar! where is my lord?’ I asked sleepily. ‘I do remember well where I should be, And there I am. Where is my Romeo?’  
  
‘Etc., etc. I dare no longer stay.’ Raffles spoke into my shoulder.  
  
I sat up slowly. ‘Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.’ I looked around, saw Raffles, reached out to take his hand, lifted it. ‘What’s here? a cup, closed in my true love’s hand?’ I shook my head as if puzzled, took the imaginary vial and examined it close. ‘Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.’ I looked at him again. ‘O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop To help me after?’ I let the vial drop, and reached out to touch Raffles’s face. ‘I will kiss thy lips; Haply some poison yet doth hang on them, To make die with a restorative.’ And suddenly I knew why he had insisted we play this scene as well. This time all was up to me and I would have no help! I saw his eye glint and knew that he was watching, which made me more unsure still. I bent down, then thought the better of it and, sliding my arm beneath his shoulders, lifted him part of the distance. His head hung backwards, and his mouth fell open. Flustered now, I lowered my face to his and kissed his upper lip, tentatively, but the mischievous cadaver closed his mouth on mine. It was difficult to think about dying then, but after a few seconds I broke off and laid him down again. ‘Thy lips are warm,’ I stated, finally.  
  
‘Lead, boy, which way?’ my dead lover whispered.  
  
‘Yea, noise? then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!’ Again, it was in our imaginations only, and I snatched at air. ‘This is thy sheath;’ I struck my breast, ‘there rust, and let me die.’ I fell.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d like to acknowledge two delightful pieces that served as loose inspiration for elements of this episode: storyfan’s [Grovel (or Bunny’s Revenge)](http://storyfan.livejournal.com/137791.html) and calliope85’s [First Sight](http://calliope85.livejournal.com/5984.html). Recommended reading! 

‘Bravo!’ cried Raffles, and we sat up and looked at each other, pleased, a bit bashful, a bit self-conscious. ‘That was inspired, Bunny, Juliet holding Romeo like a _pietà_ , really very good, because that way you don’t block the audience’s view.’  
  
‘Like a what?’ I asked.  
  
‘A _pietà_. Italian word for a sort of religious statue. Very moving, generally. Now,’ he pursued, ‘are you ready to play a different scene?’  
  
‘Any one you care to name!’  
  
Raffles’s look turned grave. ‘I inspected the balcony yesterday evening, after everyone had gone away. Someone had filed almost all the way through the nails on one side.’ His hand fell on my shoulder as I felt my eyes grow wide. ‘I’m afraid I strongly suspect our friends Emerson and Nichols. I’m sure they didn’t really mean you to get hurt, and you didn’t. But that’s hardly the point – you might have.’  
  
‘Emerson did come round after I was sent to bed yesterday evening,’ I said slowly, wondering if there was a connection to be made. ‘He did rather seem to... relish the situation, but he wasn’t there for long before some others came in, so I never heard him out. Oh, Raffles, do you think?’ I felt a shiver run through me.  
  
‘That confirms it, then!’ he exclaimed, and immediately looked reproachful. ‘You didn’t tell me any of this before.’ I felt myself colour, but the firelight saved me. ‘Well, no matter now. They deserve to be taught a lesson and, by Jove, I’m determined we shall be the ones to do it!’ His eyes flashed.  
  
‘But how?’ I interjected.  
  
After checking the corridor for eavesdroppers once more, Raffles began to pace the room. ‘This is what I think we must do, Bunny. When everyone is sleeping, I shall climb out of the window by a rope that you must then pull up and not let down again till I give the signal from outside. There are some props we need for this act. Emerson, you will have noticed, has developed an elaborate ritual of smoking one of his foul cigarettes every night when he gets into bed and of putting it out, when he has finished, in his water glass (by the way, did you know that he counts them? As if anyone should _want_ to smoke one!). But what if he grew sleepy before he doused the embers? What if it slipped from his grasp and lay hot upon the sheet until during the night it caught flame?’ He cast a penetrating look in my direction, as if trying to gauge my reaction.  
  
‘How can we make him go to sleep?’ I asked.  
  
‘We can’t. At least, it would be difficult. We are going to create the illusion, rather.’ And Raffles told me his plan. ‘You see the shape events will take?’ he concluded.  
  
‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘I do see, but, I say, Raffles, isn’t it dangerous?’  
  
‘Nobody outside will recognise me, if that’s what you mean.’  
  
‘No, well yes, but what I meant was, setting fire to the place. What if it gets out of hand?’  
  
‘Ah, no need to worry there. First of all, it won’t get out of hand, because at the very worst one of us will rouse everyone and put out the flames. Second,’ here Raffles came back to sit beside me to emphasise the seriousness of what he was about to say, ‘what _they_ did was dangerous. Far more so, in fact, because they had no control over it at all. You might actually have fallen with the balcony and broken an arm, or worse. This is not so much about revenge, Bunny, as about survival, about ridding ourselves of them.’  
  
I opened my eyes wide again. ‘You think they’ll be sent from school?’  
  
‘Most assuredly. Well, Emerson will at any rate. Perhaps not Nichols, but I doubt he would do anything on his own. His ultimate fate is out of our control.’ His face took on an impish look. ‘An element of the unknown is always essential in this sort of thing. Too much unknown and the plan is bound to fail; too little and it looks contrived. Put something in motion, wait to see how it develops and then step in at a critical moment to give a little nudge as necessary – that’s my preferred approach. Are you with me, then?’  
  
I hesitated. ‘I think I’d always want to be on your side,’ I said at last.  
  
Raffles smiled and ruffled my hair. ‘Then you’re the man for me,’ he said. ‘It will be good sport, you’ll see. We’ll have ourselves an innings.’  
  


**

  
I had nearly gone to sleep, in spite of the turmoil of my thoughts, when Raffles appeared by my bedside. I needed no explanations and rose to follow him. He had produced from somewhere a long coil of rope, which he proceeded to tie to the bedpost and let out of the window. I looked out to see where it had fallen and to survey the grounds by night, and when I turned back, I was astonished to see that Raffles had donned a ghastly checked jacket and was proposing to go out into the world thus bedecked. I gave him an appalled look, he grinned and was over the ledge and down the rope. I hauled it back and began my long wait.  
  
Soon I grew very cold, sitting on the floor by the open window. In my state of anxiety there was little danger that I would fall asleep, so I crept into Raffles’s bed, and lay waiting there. At every noise I started, and in my head scenes of our discovery played out, each more dreadful than the last. If something should happen to Raffles, it would all be on my account! Later (but how much later? Each minute felt like an hour!) I heard an owl call outside, and slid from the sheets to look. My heart leaped, for sure enough, a figure stood below, the very object of my thoughts since he had left my sight. Quickly, I secured the rope and let it down. It grew taut as he began to climb, and soon his hand, then his head appeared over the edge of the window. How glad I was to see him! But he looked meaningful and seemed to want to speak, so I approached.  
  
‘But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?’ he whispered. ‘It is the east, and Bunny is the sun! ...With love’s light wings did I o’er-perch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt.’  
  
‘Not _now_ , Raffles!’ I hissed, dismayed, then, for better effect, added, ‘If they do see thee, they will murder thee!’  
  
He smiled his approval. ‘Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.’ There was something very like peril in his own eye, for, returned from his night-time errand, he had an exalted air about him and seemed to be deriving a strange pleasure from the dangers of the situation and from my nervous state. He was also making free with the script and I could not guess at his intention.  
  
I whispered yet more urgently, ‘I would not for the world they saw thee here!’  
  
‘I have night’s cloak to hide me from their sight; And but thou love me, let them find me here: My life were better ended by their hate, Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.’ His foot found purchase on the wall outside, he rose in the window, and I hoped that he would now come in. ‘Kiss me now, would you?’ he said, suddenly himself, and I was stupefied at such daring, such folly. My heartbeat even louder than before, if it were possible, I leaned further out of the window, and his lips, as they touched mine, were cold, alive with the winter night. With a roomful of boys sleeping behind me and Raffles hanging on the window ledge – I could feel him tremble with the exertion of maintaining his position – I confess that it was a heady moment, at once sweet and agonising.  
  
He came in at the window at last and all was serious once more. He began to wind the rope about his person, and gave me a sign that I should play my part. I stole towards Emerson’s sleeping form and found the glass without trouble. The cigarette end was floating in about an inch of water, so I could not merely tip it out, as I had hoped. I made my hand narrow and introduced it into the glass, seizing the object of my efforts with some difficulty and not a little disgust (‘It will not be pleasant, but remember that it is all in a good cause,’ Raffles had told me). Just then, Emerson gave a sort of sigh, and I turned cold and stood very still, but he did not wake. Carefully, since it had stuck somewhat, I extracted my hand and set the glass back on the table where it had been. I returned to Raffles, who by then had put his night things on over the loud jacket, rope and all. He nodded with satisfaction at the sight of my prize, and gestured to the window. I cast it out. He then handed me a small packet. ‘For you,’ he mouthed, and I understood. I crept to my own bed and, as silently as possible, opened my drawer a crack, letting the packet of sweets fall onto my handkerchiefs (‘It wouldn’t do for us to look like paragons of virtue. To be truly above suspicion, we must be caught out at something small,’ Raffles had advised). Meanwhile, I could see him at the other end of the room sliding something behind Nichols’s bed.  
  
These preambles over, we convened again at the window. Raffles drew from his pocket one of Emerson’s very same cigarettes and a box of matches. He put his face to my ear and whispered: ‘This is the riskiest part.’ I nodded. He glanced round the room again, then crouched low by his bed and motioned for me to get down too and shield the light. He took a deep breath, then struck the match. It seemed hideously loud, but he quickly had the cigarette lit and the match out. He rose cautiously and held the smoking object outside, waiting for it to burn down. All the while we stayed alert to any movement or sign of wakefulness around us. When the cigarette was half gone, he gestured me back to my own bed, where I gladly returned, examining each face I passed on my way. All the room seemed to be asleep.  
  
As it was, I scarcely saw Raffles do the deed myself. He must have gone on all fours. There was a flicker of a shadow and a glow, and a short while later I saw him roll silently into his own bed. Then began the second wait of the night.  
  
It lasted some minutes, until I began to fear that all had been for nought and the plan had not worked! And then I thought I saw something, a very thin line of smoke rising in the dark. It kept on like that for some time, and presently I noticed that I could see, though indistinctly, the features of the boy on the far side of Emerson, whereas my tormentor himself was but a dark silhouette. After that, events continued apace. The light grew stronger and flickered. Emerson moved in his bed, as if having a dream, then woke.  
  
I was preparing to cry out, as Raffles had suggested, but in the event that wasn’t needed, for Emerson himself started, sat up suddenly and gave a strangled shout, backing away from the modest but undeniable flames that had sprung up beside him. The boy opposite sat up and cried out too, whilst Emerson struggled to extract himself from his sheets and in his haste fell backwards onto the floor with a thump. Everyone was awake and exclaiming now. One ran for a jug of water, another snatched up a blanket to smother the flames while a third lit a lamp. This was the scene of pandemonium that greeted the housemaster, Mr Pritchard, when he opened the door.  
  
‘Boys, boys! What is the meaning of this?’ he thundered. I was doing my best to blink sleepily, but my heart was pounding and I felt ill. What if we were found out? What if someone had seen us? Mr Pritchard descended on Emerson, whose bed by now I could not see, but which must have presented a sizeable charred patch, in addition to being well soaked through. Emerson himself still sat gasping on the floor, entangled in his sheet, but had reached for his water glass and was staring uncomprehendingly into it. ‘Smoking in bed!’ the master exclaimed, retrieving a remnant of evidence from the damage. ‘Is this a usual practice in this dormitory?’ and he looked slowly round at us all. ‘If you don’t find yourself dismissed tomorrow, Emerson, I shall be very surprised indeed. In the meantime, all of you, outside in the passage! Keep orderly! Channing, you run and fetch Mr Wilkinson and Mr Howarth, and be quick about it!’ And so in minutes we had all been shepherded out of the dormitory, Emerson protesting loudly all the while that he didn’t understand, that he had put out his cigarette, and that his father would have words.  
  
The masters performed a thorough search of the room. Worried whispers circulated amongst us as we stood in our dressing gowns and slippers, with Mr Pritchard occasionally shouting ‘Silence!’ It seemed that we were in collective disgrace, and I tried to catch Raffles’s eye, but he was conferring with Chatfield and others. My eye was continually drawn to him, in part to check that nothing of the hideous checks and the rope was showing, but also in amazement that he could manage to look so much one of the others after all the extraordinary deeds he had performed that night. When finally the masters emerged from the room, they appeared to have had a good harvest. We all fell silent.  
  
‘Darlow and Nichols, the headmaster will see you both in the morning,’ Mr Pritchard began. ‘Farrers, Tomlinson, Chatfield, Warren, Cook, Raffles and Hargreaves, you should know that I have confiscated all smoking material, and yes, that includes your pipe, Tomlinson. You can come to me about it later. All of you who had sweets and other foodstuffs amongst your effects, you are far too numerous to name, but you know who you are. Palmer-Fowke, was it really necessary to abscond from supper yesterday with a pork pie that has in the intervening hours soiled several of your shirts?’ The master cast a withering look at our crestfallen comrade. ‘For all gluttons, whose names I have taken down, no pudding for the rest of the week. Right, all of you, back to bed now, and don’t imagine that there will be any more mischief tonight. We shall keep watch until you are all asleep. Retribution in the morning! Emerson, you shall sleep elsewhere. You have destroyed one bed, but I trust you will manage to avoid increasing the count to two in the same night.’  
  
We all filed back, most of us cowed but agitated. As we entered the room, Ayres came up behind me.   
  
‘Did you have anything?’ he whispered.  
  
I nodded. ‘Some sweets,’ I was pleased to admit.  
  
‘Oh, bad luck,’ he commiserated. ‘Lucky for me I polished off all those cakes from home yesterday. Look, if you want, you can have my pudding one day this week. It’s rotten for you – I’ve never seen you have anything –’  
  
‘No talking!’ Mr Pritchard reminded us sternly. I got into my bed, determined to refuse Ayres’s offer if he raised it again. The enormity of my role in the night’s events awed me and I lay a long time in the darkness before finally dropping off to sleep.  
  


**

  
The following day, I could scarcely keep my eyes open during lessons at all; but for that, and the incessant whisperings about Emerson’s punishment and Nichols’s and Darlow’s disgrace, about which no one actually knew anything, I would have believed all of the previous night to be a dream. I had much more to reflect on than any of the others, and I confess that I gave thought in equal measure to the fire and the boys’ fate, and to the stranger question of my relations with Raffles. He gave me neither a word nor a glance all day, and did not ask me to perform any duties that evening, but I could contain my curiosity no longer by the time evening came, so went and knocked of my own initiative upon his study door.  
  
‘Bunny, my good fellow, always a pleasure to see you!’ he greeted me in this curious, hearty tone. ‘Do come in.’  
  
I was at a loss, and did not now know how to broach my subject. I stood uncertainly by his desk, and he, seated at it, waited expectantly for me to begin, every bit the master hearing out a foolish schoolboy. ‘Last night,’ I blurted out, and stopped.  
  
‘Yes? Many things happened last night,’ at last I thought I could detect a trace of conspiracy in his voice.  
  
‘What happened to Nichols?’ I asked finally, ‘and Darlow?’  
  
‘Ah, now that is the very question I was asking myself,’ he began. ‘What can poor Darlow have had stashed away to excite the ire of the masters in this way? I confess I feel a bit,’ he lowered his voice here, ‘responsible for old Darlow’s fall. But Nichols?’ he shook his head sorrowfully, ‘his is a sad case, I’m afraid. I do believe that he was found to have, hidden behind his bed, translations of certain of Martial’s epigrams. Illustrated,’ he added.  
  
I had read some Martial only a few weeks before for my Latin lesson and did not appreciate the significance of this. I determined, however, that this once I would not reveal my ignorance by asking, and nodded.  
  
‘You are an innocent, Bunny,’ Raffles pronounced. ‘And I would blush to read you what Nichols had in his collection.’ He paused, and looked very near to blushing as it was. ‘In fact, it was wrong of me to mention this to you at all. Emerson is blustering and protesting, and has counted and re-counted his cigarettes no doubt, but he will go. Nichols will have to endure many stern speeches, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they set the vicar on him. He’ll stay, like as not, but they’ll keep a very close eye on him from now on, or I’m a Dutchman!’ His blue eyes were twinkling now.  
  
‘Well,’ I took a breath, ‘Thank you, Raffles! For going to such lengths on my account, I mean.’ I felt this was inadequate and clumsy, and at the same time was somehow disappointed by my friend’s manner. But what had I expected? I extended my hand and he shook it, held it fast a moment, and let it go.


	5. Chapter 5

The play by now was only two weeks away. Over those two weeks, as the days lengthened perceptibly and the temperatures grew warmer, there was a sense of excitement about the school. Rather than join in the chatter, however, I had taken to retiring to some quiet corner when I was neither in lessons nor at rehearsals. Since Raffles had once again retreated into a world in which I played only a minor part, I found myself increasingly fascinated by him, by his daring, his cunning, his movements, his contrasts, his inscrutability. I wondered too at his changeable temperament, and was frustrated by having apparently entered into an intimate, conspiratorial friendship with him, only to be all but ignored over the days that followed. And yes, though perhaps I did not admit it to myself at the time, something too about the way in which he had kissed me, especially at the window that night, which could not be put down to practising our parts, something there made me giddy, made me wish I knew where I stood, made me want it to happen again.  
  
I was thinking thoughts like these, sitting in one of the library windows on the afternoon before our performance. My eyes had fallen shut, my head leaned back against the stone and my face may have betrayed some of the confusion that I felt. I was sitting thus when suddenly I felt myself being watched, and opened my eyes. There Raffles stood, not three yards away, examining me with an interested expression on his face. I started.  
  
He approached me. ‘If I didn’t know better,’ he began, and stopped. Under his hypnotic gaze I could only look up at him in a sort of rapture. ‘Poor little rabbit,’ he said now, mysteriously. His eyes, still unreadable, plumbed the depths of my very soul – he stood quite near me now – then he smiled warmly, turned, and went on his way. I felt quite shaken by this encounter, but whatever it meant for me, it created ideal conditions for Shakespeare. On stage that night, I could feel strange, uncertain currents pass between us until at last I fell onto his breast, clutching the dagger to me. The audience could not have failed to sense it too, and the applause, after the Prince’s last lines, was thunderous. Raffles and I stood together in the wings as the others took their bows and waited for us to join them on the stage. We went once, were greeted with cheers and huzzahs, and retreated. When the clapping continued as before, Mr Howarth, beaming from ear to ear, urged everyone to go through the bows again. Palmer-Fowke, unhappy pork pies forgotten, trotted out to roars of approval.  
  
‘Separately,’ Raffles suddenly said to me. ‘We’ll go separately this time. I’ll go first!’ and he strode out under a crescendo of applause. I wondered how long I should wait before following, but needn’t have worried, for I saw him turn towards me and gesture, and some force propelled me forward. I was approaching the edge of the stage when he got on one knee before me and took my hand. I curtsied to him as he kissed it, and the audience laughed and clapped harder. I curtsied to the audience, we motioned to Mr Howarth, everyone bowed again, and it was over.

  


**

  
The school had organised a celebratory fete for us that evening. It began with speeches by Nab and Mr Howarth and continued with lemonade and cakes, jokes and revelry all round. Everyone wanted to talk to Raffles, of course, and to Palmer-Fowke, and, to my surprise, to me. A number of older boys asked me if I’d done any theatricals before and congratulated me on my courage, especially for climbing into the balcony again, after the earlier mishap. They very kindly kept refilling my glass with lemonade and, I couldn’t fathom it, seemed most interested in everything I had to say. I felt myself becoming very animated, and had just told a story, when Raffles came over and pulled me aside.

‘That’s enough lemonade for you, Bunny,’ he said, taking my glass from my hand. ‘Someone has doctored it!’ he whispered, in answer to the puzzlement he read in my face. ‘You are unfortunately quite drunk already. I’m afraid I was speaking to a couple of the masters over there and didn’t notice till now.’

‘Am I?’ I asked, but even as I did, I could feel a sort of distance between me and everything else, and found myself being careful in reaching for the edge of the table.

Raffles looked closely at me. ‘You go out into the passage and wait for me there. I’ll be along in a minute. Don’t go straight out, though; stop to say something to someone. A thank you, or something brief. Go on, then.’

I left him and surveyed the room. Collier was standing to one side, so I approached him and spoke a few words on his performance as Mercutio, recalling that it was the part I had hoped to play at the outset. He thanked me, and shook his head. ‘Nobody could have pulled off Juliet like you did, though,’ he said, ‘you and old Raffles tonight – you were – I say, Manders, if I didn’t know differently, I’d have sworn it was real!’ he finished with a laugh, as my jaw dropped. ‘Thanks, old chap,’ he concluded, and sent me off with a clap on the shoulder as two other boys approached. With that dismissal, and with my ears ringing in a curious way, I slipped out into the dark and relative silence of the passage. The air was cooler there, and pleasant on my hot cheeks. I closed my eyes, and the world spun unpleasantly about me. Suddenly Raffles was behind me, and urging me to come with him.

We had just set off when Raffles stopped. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said. ‘I wonder if the door is locked.’ We retraced our steps to the hall that had served as a theatre, and the handle moved in my companion’s grasp. He turned and gave me a delighted smile, then proceeded into the hall. It was very dim, and I walked into a chair as I followed him. He came back. ‘I was forgetting your condition. Sit there, and I won’t be a moment.’ True to his word, Raffles was back shortly, holding something beneath his blazer. We left the hall and resumed our journey across the school.

‘What is it?’ I asked, as we crossed a quad.

‘I’ll show you just now,’ came the reply, and sure enough, once his study door was shut behind us, Raffles produced from under his blazer a strange thing that vaguely resembled a bird’s nest. ‘I rather think this may come in handy at some point,’ he said, shaking it out, and at once I recognised it as the false beard that had served to make Capulet look old enough to be my father.

I laughed and looked up at him in a mixture of disbelief and admiration. ‘But you’re not planning anything more... along those lines, are you?’

‘I hadn’t planned anything for tonight, no, though you’ll admit, Bunny, it is a wasted chance, what with everyone at the celebration.’ He tried on the beard and walked around the room in it with a curious gait and presently began to whistle. Then he stopped and turned to me. ‘Well, what do you think?’

‘That I wouldn’t recognise you in broad daylight!’ I exclaimed, which pleased him, and he removed the beard.

A question had been slowly working its way to the forefront of my thoughts, and now it emerged. Perhaps it was the potent lemonade that gave me the daring I needed to ask it.

‘I say, Raffles?’ I paused and made sure I had his attention. ‘What’s her name, your girl, I mean, the girl in the photograph?’ I looked over at him, and the hesitation in his face was plain to read. Why didn’t he wish to tell me?

‘You promise you won’t tell?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Even your friend Ayres?’

‘Yes!’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What?’

‘I said, I don’t know.’

‘But –’ I didn’t understand. A small smile was playing at the corners of his mouth now. ‘But there was a photograph. People saw it. You can’t deny _that_!’

‘You haven’t paid attention to what I’ve been saying, Bunny. I haven’t denied anything at all. Certainly, there was a photograph, but as to the girl’s name, I don’t believe I ever knew it.’

‘But then why?’

Raffles paused and looked serious. ‘I didn’t tell you, Bunny, but I was afraid from the start that there might be trouble for you with this play. I thought – wrongly, perhaps – that, what with you being my fag and with us being thick as thieves and then being cast as we were in the play on top of it, I thought that we might have a hard time of it. So then, I thought that any unpleasantness could be avoided if people believed... if people believed that my affections were engaged elsewhere. I wrote to my sister and begged her to send me post haste a portrait of one of her friends, the prettiest one she had. I promised that I would send it straight back, and indeed I did. So I’m afraid that I don’t know her name, you see, Bunny. ‘But let’s call her something, shall we? What about Juliet – do you like that name?’ He was grinning at me now.

My thoughts were in a whirl! He had suspected that what had happened would happen, and had tried to avert it. That his ruse had not been entirely successful and that he did not know it was thanks only to my silence on the subject when reporting the incidents with Emerson! But something more was gnawing at my thoughts now. I struggled to put my finger on it.

‘I know, Bunny,’ he came over and put a strong hand on my arm, ‘it is troubling, but there are people who will think such things. It isn’t all in my imagination.’

‘So,’ I began slowly, ‘that’s why you were sometimes... distant with me too, is it?’ I raised my eyes to his once more.

Raffles put his head to one side and gave a wry smile. ‘You did notice, then? I thought you would be so taken up with things that you wouldn’t pay any attention at all to me.’

I stared. ‘I wish you had told me!’ I exclaimed. Everything was now falling into place.

‘Sorry old chap, I didn’t think it was important. I wanted you to be carefree. Nothing _did_ happen, did it? Apart from that other rotten business with Emerson and Nichols, obviously?’ When I hesitated, he bent down until his face was level with mine, and peered at me.

‘No,’ I said softly, which wasn’t a lie, and I shut my eyes, overwhelmed by Raffles’s revelations, as well as by his proximity. I felt him stroke my cheek.

‘You’re a tired rabbit, aren’t you? You’re falling asleep on your feet. Push off to bed, why don’t you?’ He shepherded me gently towards the door.

‘Yes,’ I said, suddenly exhausted. I started to open the door, then stopped and turned back. ‘I say, Raffles, you won’t tell anyone that tonight I was...’ I searched for the word.

‘In your cups? A bit inspired? No, Bunny, a gentleman never tells. Nor does he take advantage,’ he added enigmatically.

‘Thank you. Good-night then.’

‘Good night, Bunny, and good show!’

  


**

  
A few days later we were all packing up for the Easter holidays. The dormitory was a buzzing place, with a half-full bag on every bed, items being returned to their rightful owners, sometimes through the air overhead, and a general note of spring-time coming in at the windows, which were open to a mild breeze, milky sunshine and trees beginning very delicately to leaf out. Soon the eleven would be back on the cricket pitch.

I was lending a book to Ayres when he looked up. I turned round, and there was Raffles, looking down at me. I may have turned a shade pinker when I saw him.

‘What time is your train, Manders?’ he asked.

‘Not till two in the afternoon,’ I replied.

‘Then you’ll be able to help me take my things down to the station in half an hour?’

‘You can count on me!’

‘Excellent,’ he pronounced, and moved away.

And so the late morning found us walking unhurriedly through the grounds, Raffles with his bag and I carrying his coat and a few small things. The sun emerged occasionally from behind diaphanous veils of cloud and there was birdsong and a smell of earth and linden blossoms. The station was not far and we were soon there, amidst a few boys running to and fro, here and there groups of parents and sisters, the odd elderly couple. Raffles’s train was at the platform, and we mounted. He found an empty compartment without difficulty, and we lodged his things securely.

‘Right,’ said Raffles brightly. ‘We’ll have more adventures next term, then, Bunny, what?’

‘Yes,’ my reply was sober at the thought of the many days stretching ahead during which we would be separated.

‘I’ll see you after the hols,’ Raffles put out his hand, and I shook it. Our eyes met, and I daresay it was some supplication in my look that made him forget to continue shaking my hand. We simply looked at each other for some seconds, then with his other hand Raffles reached past my shoulder to push the door of the compartment.

‘This can’t become a habit,’ he said firmly, ‘but maybe once more for old times’ sake,’ and he took my face in his hands. ‘This _is_ what you want, Bunny?’ he asked, regarding me with an earnest expression. For an answer I put my arms about his neck and quivered in anticipation as he brought his mouth down to mine. He took my upper lip between his own, and all of me tingled when his tongue found mine. His hands strayed down my back and drew me nearer. I could feel my heart beat in my throat, in my ears and elsewhere, and breathed, ‘oh,’ into his mouth, to which he replied with a hum of appreciation. My legs were quite weak now, and I had just formed a better grip on his shoulders, when he suddenly broke free.

‘You’ll have to go,’ he said in a sort of hoarse whisper, and then I heard the conductor outside clapping his hands and calling ‘All aboard, all aboard!’

Dizzy, I tried to catch my breath and calm the rush of sensations coursing through me. I stared at Raffles in disbelief that I should have to leave that very minute, but he opened the door of the compartment and pushed me through it, bundling me down the passage until we stood on the step above the platform. The smell of metal, steam and coal swirled about us and we heard the whistle sound. I stepped down onto the platform.

‘See you in a fortnight!’ Raffles said with an intent look. I nodded, and the train began to move. I waved, he waved, and I watched as the train bore him away out of sight, and turned to go. A snatch of verse came unbidden to me then:

  


> Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books,  
> But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

 

I started back toward school.  
 

END


End file.
